....in the Holy Spirit... continuing the series on The Apostles' Creed

(We're now getting towards the end of our series of posts by one of our members on The Apostles' Creed).

I believe in the Holy Spirit.

‘In the beginning … the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and the Spirit of God moved over the water’ Genesis 1:1

‘The Spirit of the Lord, indeed, fills the whole world, and that which holds all things together knows every word that is said’ Wisdom of Solomon 1:7 (Roman Catholic Bible)

‘No sooner had he come up out of the water than he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you.’ Mark 1:10-11

In relation to this bit of the Apostles’ Creed I could have kept quoting little moments like this from all over the Bible, like the part of the Creed where the community reflects on the Jesus stories.  But in the Creed there is only one straightforward statement about Spirit.  Seemingly, the community isn’t talking about Spirit in the same way it was talking about Jesus. I say seemingly, because I will argue that that is exactly what it does; but we will get to that.

There is a schema, or story dynamic, that comes again and again from Genesis right through the Bible tradition; and that is the movement of the Spirit.  The movement or action of God in the world, known through the vehicle of creation.  We hear of that movement occurring over the water, before the world (as we know it) even existed, and it is no coincidence that the book of Luke talks of the Spirit coming over Mary, nor that the book of Mark has the Spirit descending on the baptised Jesus.  The narrative of the Bible is the movement of the Spirit through history, a tale of the working of God in and through God’s people; and when the authors of the various books in the Bible want to highlight the beginning of a particular work of God, when they want to highlight a new beginning that is in fact a re-beginning of that first work of God, they do so with a return to that ‘breath’ of God, that movement of the Spirit.

It is not going too far to say that, if I believe in any of what I’ve reflected on in this series of posts so far, it is this that I believe in.

If I can hear any whisper, feel any waft, see any ripple, smell any back note, get any aftertaste of God in the world, in my own life, in the community that values the Bible tradition, in the narrative of Jesus: then what I believe I have found is the movement of the Holy Spirit. 

We may see all sorts of other things at work: greed, pride, power, fear, alienation, shame, hurt; but so long as we can see the Spirit at work, we can be together, we can share the joy of that, the awe of that, the readiness to re-begin of that.

In the book Acts of the Apostles, the author presents the nascent community of believers as having the Holy Spirit come down upon them in wind and tongues of fire.  The author presents this moment as another re-beginning, another movement of the Spirit, and it is this continuation of God creating, this continuing of God at work in and through God’s people, this continuing of God being made flesh in Mary’s womb, this continuing of Jesus coming up from the river Jordan, that this last section of the Creed points up, and reflects on.

Just as the community was reminding itself of the God at the start of the story of how it understands the world; just as it was talking to itself around the narrative of Jesus; at this point, it is recognising the ongoing work of the Spirit in the community itself, in the world here and now, and affirming its firm hope that such a work will never end.  Again, this is neither a list of philosophical concepts argued over, nor a test of loyalty to a power structure: this is a community in conversation, using its shared stories and experience to give shape to a shared exuberance that wells up and spills over into a way of living in the world.

I believe in the Spirit as that which I recognise as ‘more’ in the world; that which runs through the Bible tradition and the Gospel narratives as the breath that gives it all life.  And I believe in the Spirit as the Wisdom and the Brightness, still there all over the world to be found by any who seek (cf. Wisdom of Solomon 6: 12-16).  So before we move on to reflect on what this means for Church, for the wider community, and for an understanding of how we live in the world, I just want to pause and affirm that I believe in the Holy Spirit.

....and in Jesus Christ... continuing our series on the Apostles' Creed

(the latest in our series breaking down the Christian Apostles' Creed for further thought, by one of our members)

…"and in Jesus Christ", one anointed by God

It is very telling that at this point in the Apostles’ Creed we find a narrative; and this narrative not only forms the heart of the whole creed, but also it takes up just over half of the whole text. 

It is not surprising that the heart of a Christian Creed is the story that the life and work of Jesus is the focus of everything. Traditional Christianity’s central teaching has always been that God is revealed in a special way in the person of Jesus. It isn’t its metaphysics, its moral teachings. or its rituals that sets the traditional Christian faith apart from those of other faith systems: it is the faith that the tales passed on about one peculiar and unique man, the story of Jesus, give us the ultimate insight into the very nature of God. Traditional Christianity doesn’t just make the claim there is a teacher bringing us wisdom or instruction about or even from God, it claims that in gazing on the Jesus of the gospels we are in a mysterious way gazing on God. 

Let that sink in. 

The Creed here isn’t about outlining things a traditional Christian has to accept about Jesus, or highlighting the parts of the story that matter.  Rather, it is a community reminiscing over some of its favourite moments in a narrative they all know well. They are saying, “Do you remember when Jesus did this?”, or “Wasn’t it amazing when Jesus said that?” In reciting their creed, the community is not listing a prescription of being Christian but is continually reminding itself of that shared experience of God in and through the person of Jesus. The communities saying this with and to each other have a shared collection of stories, poems, and letters, to draw on.  And, held most dear and used as their key to read all the others with, they have their stories about Jesus. They can shorthand, and part-quote, and bounce off each other, because they have this shared foundation, this shared treasury to draw from.

We call this treasure the Bible today, but most of the New Testament of the Bible wasn’t originally thought of as sacred.  It was just a collection of letters between Christians, such as the sort of letters people might write between each other today.

So we share much of the Bible with those who first used the words of this Creed. But look how short the Creed is, and how bald.  The community isn’t united by this short, fixed set of words; nor by any other list of ideas and expounded principles.  Those alone are lifeless, and never amount to the Living Word that enlivens the traditional Christian communities.

So much for traditional Christians.  How does this relate to Unitarians?  Well, for all we Unitarians have gained, and we have gained much, in our openness to the literature of other faiths and cultures, we have lost a willingness to hold something in common — to not always be needing something different, something new.  Yet let us not be naïve: it is a modern thing for Christians to hold a Bible in their hands as we do.  During most of history the average person could not read, let alone dream of having the resources to own their own very expensive copy of a text. The Bible as we know it has taken time to come together, and even today there are many different versions and translations. But what early communities did have was a tradition, passed on in songs, artwork, plays, rituals, stories told.  The Bible was never a set text; it is and has always been a collection passed on and kept alive in that re-telling and reinterpretation in new times and places. Those of us not in traditional Christian settings may not be familiar with the injunction that is given out again and again, that each generation must reinterpret the Bible anew.  We may instead imagine that such Churches have one fixed meaning that has to be accepted dogmatically.

The Bible is not a book, nor even a set of books.  It instead constitutes a community reminding itself of what matters, singing its songs, telling its stories. Valuing that — and living in that community — isn’t to disparage what another community has, or to be closed-minded to what we can learn from each other, but it is a brilliantly helpful start point.  This is a shared basis to talk with one another, a shared place to reflect on things in the light of news brought in from elsewhere. Having that shared narrative at the heart of a community doesn’t exclude other narratives, but it protects a community from becoming a collection of individuals each having to grind through telling their own stories and explaining their own references.

Why do we as Unitarians have to throw that out, because we don’t view Jesus as the traditional Christians do?

We all long to share and be close to others.  Sometimes our desire to be closer to those far away, and the new and the exotic, can blind us to how we push away those closer to home, and the well-used, the old and familiar.  That Truth in which we all live and move and have our being isn’t shattered and found in shards amongst all the peoples of the earth: it is present to all, in its wholeness.  It may be hard to hear, but the task is not to find new truths and insights (there aren’t any new ones) but to unlearn the lies we have told ourselves and to be healed of the blindnesses that afflict us all.  

Seeing things differently, as we do when confronted by other cultures and other ways of doing and saying things, may well help jar us from the slumber and numbness the familiar can hold; and in any case not everyone will remain within the communities they were born into.  Further, it is possible to belong to more than one community at a time.  But we cannot truly value what any community has to offer unless we value those actual communities, and not just the pieces of them we personally enjoy. The dialogue within the community that this Creed represents has at its heart a shared narrative, a shared story and experience precisely because it is a community and not a collection of consumers of interesting ephemeral ideas and colourful images.

Jesus of the Gospels, the Word made Flesh, invisible God seen in physical Man. The shared narrative, which brings a community together and which in that community helps people to experience and to make present God in the world. Yes, I believe in that Jesus; I believe telling that story is worthwhile; I believe a community that has that Jesus at its heart can transform and enlighten. 

There are those who say Paul’s letter to the Christians in Corinth (Corinthians 1:13) is a description of the Jesus of the Gospels.  I do believe I see God in Jesus, however dimly, and that we can make God present when others can see that Jesus in our Unitarian communities too.

Didymus catches up with the rest of the UK in lock down

Well it took us a year.  But after a gap of a whole year in our gatherings, at last on 7th March 2021 we held our first gathering by Zoom.  It was so successful that we have decided to continue doing that for the time being.

We will meet at 5 p.m. on the second Sunday of each month until further notice.  Even after we resume meeting face to face back in the Meeting House we may also choose to gather at other times or for other purposes on Zoom.  Like many others we can see the benefits of being accessible remotely when we are spread far and wide, and of being able to welcome friends from further afield.